Build a solid business foundation.

if you if you want to be understood entrepreneurship is probably not the route for you notoriously entrepreneurs guys are misunderstood it's just who we are and like a good artist they're appreciated after their time do you not I mean so there's like as I've been spending a lot of time studying this and the research we've done the empirical evidence actually shows us three things the first is that if you can survive what we call 9 9 9 the first 999 days of your business you're probably gonna make it and at 999 days is about 3

years give or take a few days just 999 days so for those of you here with ideas as you're starting those of you here who are running you know that in that first 999 days it's very very difficult yeah the reason is simple it's because there's nothing there you're building everything see this building we're in I love I love architecture and I love buildings but this building we're in is incredible isn't it because we're all in it and none of us here have a dart of mind that it will hold us safely yeah none of

us here have thought about whether or not these things above us could collapse on our heads the reason is because the foundation of this building is so well said so the most important part of the building is the part of the building we don't see that's so powerful I'm gonna let you guys think about it I like two minutes I was gonna let you guys like i'ma let you marinate in my wisdom no I'm joking so when you build your business the most important parts of building your business are the parts nobody sees nobody sees

I can tell you now that probably what I spend 80 percent of my time doing is the stuff you guys don't know about it's completely quiet and it's the stuff you'll probably never know about but without that stuff I can't do the magic I just the magic can't happen right so where a lot of us lose it in that first 999 days and I want you to remember it is you've got to focus on building a foundation that foundation is critical foundation is critical okay without it it doesn't matter how nice that building is it'll

fall when the rains come it will fall and so for each of us as entrepreneurs that foundation is critical and the foundation starts with you it starts here you can't build it unless you build you yeah mm-hmm true story for the first seven eight years of mice public speaking career I had a pre-staged song it was the same song every time I went onstage it was all a dream I used to read Word Up Magazine salt and pepper and Heavy D up in the limousine hanging pictures on my wall you guys notice icons over my

yeah yeah biggie smalls right so I watched the biggie smalls movie when it came out and there's a beautiful part in the movie where biggie smalls is talking to Puff Daddy and and puffs this tomb biggie we're gonna change the world G we don't change the world and big it looks at him and says you can't change the world if you don't change yourself yeah so a business is the thing you leave for the world it's a manifestation of you your ideas your creativity your thoughts but if you're not okay it'll never be okay and

so a lot of us and in my earlier days I used to judge people now I've learned that actually judgment is weak you rather exercise empathy not judgment seek first to understand before you ridicule and then started thinking about I want how we do things especially as those of us who've just started in business predominantly black people and the reason is because we do come from a past were you couldn't own a business now we can and we can own big ones successful ones we can kick ass and then and then I started watching the

things we do when we do own big ones and successful ones now it's like why do we spend our money this way what do we buy these things why do we gather at these places so that old men with bellies can get young girls without bellies and men and then a few months later the old man with the belly leaves the girl with a belly and finds another one I'm on fire today fire fire please please so remember that big build a foundation critical the best way to build a foundation is going here okay so

that's the first thing I just wanted to say the second thing I want to say is it's like building a building you've got to build scaffolding right you've seen when buildings go up they put up a scaffolding around it and the scaffolding does a couple of things but the main thing it does is it ensures that the people who are building upon the foundation are safe to build upon the foundation most of us here run businesses that just don't have scaffolding so if you're not in the business it can't run if you're not at work

there is no work for those people you're not really an entrepreneur what we call self-employed there is all those subtle a critical difference you see the entrepreneur creates systems that enable him to remove himself from the business so he can be somewhere else the self-employed person builds the business so that it can support usually a lifestyle but absent of them in the business there's no business notoriously over the past 25 years especially us this is where we've failed this is exactly where we've failed we haven't yet learned how to build the scaffolding so that this

building can stand even when the engineers are not here even when the architects are gone and that only needs a few maintenance people to make sure that it's running okay